Three Years' Change
by gufis253
Summary: The story of how Marti realized just what was going on in her family, over three years. Dasey, Lizwin


Okay, so I've never written for LWD before. I haven't even seen the movie. Which I refuse to do, because I want to live in the dreamland where Dasey trumps all. ANYWHO...this is mostly Marti's POV.

PLLLLLLLLEASE review! I'll love you forever! (you know you want to...all the cool kids are doin' it)

Oh, and I don't own anything.

LWD LWD LWD

Marti was fourteen when she finally realized all that had gone on in her little family. She had suspected certain things, like how close her siblings once were. But in her immaturity, she just let it go as normality.

She got her first inkling about Casey and Derek after they had gone off to college. It wasn't until their second year, when she was eleven, that she heard Lizzie and Edwin gossiping in hushed tones in the attic. She didn't absorb much of what they were saying at the time-or so she thought. It wasn't until much later that she realized what she subconsciously knew.

Lizzie had been telling Edwin that Derek had kissed Casey. They were speaking in their weird code-like language; something they had developed over time.

It was the summer after their second year that George and Nora were fighting in the kitchen. Marti had been in the living room and soon hid so that they wouldn't see her. She heard them blaming "her and him" respectively. The house had never been so awkward that entire summer.

In their third year, when Marti was twelve, she heard Nora begging someone on the phone to come home for Christmas. She was hoping it was Derek or Casey. They had stopped really talking to her over the last year.

Christmas came and so did Derek and Casey. By this time, Marti was beginning to notice changes in Edwin and Lizzie. They spent even more time in the attic than they used to, and "went to the library to study" together a lot. When Derek and Casey showed up, tension was thick in the air. George and Nora spent a huge amount of time in their bedroom downstairs arguing, and Casey and Derek were unusually quiet.

The night before they were to return to school, Casey and Derek took Edwin, Lizzie and Marti out without their parents. Squished between Lizzie and Edwin in the back, she could just barely make out Derek saying, "She's too young." Casey just shushed him.

At the restaurant, Casey began to make some sort of awkward announcement, but Derek got fed up and stopped her. He grabbed Marti by the hand and told her to go call their parents and tell them they would be home in a couple of hours. She knew she was being left out of the conversation, but the desperate look in Derek's eyes drained the fight out of her. She did as she was told. When she returned she noticed the red, embarrassed faces of all four siblings.

Things got even weirder over the next months. Lizzie spent a ridiculous amount of time on the phone with Casey, and Edwin with Derek. They still seemed to blow her off whenever SHE called them, though.

With her parents so focused on the baby, and her siblings busy with their own lives, Marti felt alone. She began to drift from her family, instead choosing to spend her time away from home. She began to hang out with the popular crowd.

In May of that year, after an incident involving some alcohol and defacing school property, she returned home to find not only her parents, but Lizzie and Edwin, AND Derek and Casey seated around her living room waiting for her. She got told off by all of them, and a promise from her older siblings that they would try to pay more attention to her.

It worked, for awhile. Derek and Casey were done with their classes so they stayed the rest of that week. Marti overheard Nora telling Casey that they couldn't stay under their roof "while like this". They left the next day.

Lizzie hung out with her for the first bit of the summer, while Edwin was away at a science camp, but when he returned, the two of them became secluded in the attic as usual.

She ran away from home that summer.

She was going to try to see her mother, but her mother was in France.

So she tried to find Sally, instead.

Anything to be away from her ever changing family.

She was caught at a bus station in some little town in Manitoba, and dragged home by the police. She never did reach Sally.

Her "family" was waiting for her when she got there. The rift between her parents and oldest siblings was even more apparent, now. They barely spoke. She was kept under some sort of parental enforced house arrest for the remainder of the summer. She did, however manage to sneak out and pierce her belly button.

She was sitting in her bed one night when she heard the heated conversation outside of her door. Lizzie, Casey, and Derek wanted her to move to Queens and go to school near there. Edwin said he would miss her too much. George said he wouldn't have her influenced by THEM of all people. Nora just cried.

September came, and a decision had to be made. George and Nora decided she was to stay with them.

Lizzie was the next to stop speaking to her mother, and soon after, George. Edwin tried to make peace in a bad situation, but that lasted until Christmas. Marti had been out at a Christmas party most of the day and night, when she came home to Lizzie packing up the car she shared with Edwin. Ed was helping her, adding his own belongings to hers.

Marti didn't even say goodbye.

There was no contact made until June of that year. Marti had stopped hanging out with anyone, instead choosing to be a solitary, withdrawn creature. The day after the last day of school, a fourteen year old Marti came home to find her real mother sitting on the front porch. She told her that she was going to Europe for the summer, and that Marti was to come with her. Although she had little contact with her mother, Marti jumped at the chance to be away from it all.

A summer away was just what she needed. She hadn't been this happy since Derek and Casey originally went to college. But the truth of the matter was that her mother needed to get back to work...this time in China. Marti would have to return home.

Three days before school was to begin, Derek showed up at the front door. He had grown so much. She'd barely heard from him for most of the last year, but still found herself excited to see him. She was given money to go hang out with her friends that night.

She returned home to find tears in Nora's eyes. George seemed upset, too. They didn't speak to her when she came in, so she went straight upstairs, finding Derek in her room.

He sat her down and told her she was coming to live with him. She was told that Lizzie and Edwin lived next door, and she would see them all the time.

She asked if Casey would be around.

That's when the pieces began to fall into place.

Casey was living with Derek.

Lizzie was living with Edwin.

Something wasn't normal.

But she loved her siblings, so she never questioned it. She just happily packed up her room alongside Derek. When they had finished packing up the U-Haul trailer attached to his car with her things, she left Derek outside and went in to say goodbye. Nora and George still seemed really upset. So she walked up to each of them, hugged them stiffly and whispered goodbye. With a quick kiss to the not so little baby, she was off.

For the first few weeks that she was living with Casey and Derek, everything seemed weird. Casey would sit beside him on the couch and he'd shoot her a glare. Lizzie and Edwin barely spoke. They were all trying to hide something from her.

It was just after Halloween when she decided to sit down and figure it all out. Casey and Derek were still living together. Lizzie and Edwin were living in the apartment next door-together. She thought back on the conversations she had overheard in the last three years. She thought of the late night attic rendezvous of Lizzie and Edwin. She thought back even further; remembering how, near the end of high school, Derek and Casey seemed to get along better.

That's when it clicked.

But no, it couldn't be...really? They were siblings!

She thought harder. Although Marti herself had always considered them all as close as blood, the rest of them hadn't really. A knock on her door shocked her out of her reverie. It was Casey and Derek, trying to figure out why she was still awake at one in the morning on a school night. She must not have been able to hide her shock at her little revelation as well as she thought, as they looked at her and quickly, nervously, at each other.

She finally found the guts.

"Is it true?...You...?" She stuttered, not sure how to word what she was trying to understand.

They came in and sat on either side of her.

"Yeah, Smarti, it's true." Derek said, quietly.

"You...you guys...a-and...Lizzie and Edwin?" she questioned quickly.

"Yeah, kiddo. It's all true." Casey answered.

"Is it...wrong?" Marti asked, trying not to sound judgemental, just really curious.

"Well," Derek began, "Dad and Nora think so. We're not technically blood relatives. We just happened to live in the same house for a few years. We don't think it's wrong, but I want you to feel however you feel, Smarti. If you don't like it, you can go home...we won't think any less of you, okay?"

She sat there for a minute thinking hard. She didn't see how it was wrong. She knew it wasn't normal, but since WHEN were ANY of them normal?

"You love each other?"

"Yeah." They said in unison.

"And Edwin and Lizzie are the same way?"

"Uh huh..." Derek said, unsure.

Marti smiled gently and hugged her long lost big brother. "Then you love each other. And I love all of you. You're happy, I'm happy. Just PLEASE don't send me back to that house."

They laughed and hugged her.

LWD LWD LWD

In July of that year, when Marti had turned fifteen, George and Nora received a letter in the mail. Marti had written it to inform them on what they had missed.

In December, Derek and Casey had finally decided to marry, as they now had their little sister with them. In March, Edwin had proposed to Lizzie and she had accepted; wedding date to be decided. In June, Marti had finished out the school year with straight A's and new friends. And just the other day, Casey and Derek had found out they were having a baby.

"I can't go through life shunning my grandchild." Nora said, after reading the letter several times over.

"Neither can I." George replied.

Christmas of that year was spent back at the family home. It was awkward at first, but forgiveness seemed to be flowing as George and Nora were shown the sonograms.

In February, a little baby girl was born, her whole family there waiting to meet her.


End file.
